


Words of Affirmation

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Loyalties [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Established Relationship, Gen, Missing Scene, Multi, OT3, Relationship Problems, Relationship Study, Vignette, omera pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: When Din finds her a moment later, she is done counting, but she hasn’t moved. “All right, what’s—” he starts as he pushes aside the tarp over the door, but then he sees that Omera is there and Cara is not, and his step falters.“I think,” Omera says, her voice brittle, “I think she left us.”
Relationships: Cara Dune/Omera (Star Wars), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Series: Loyalties [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638454
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	Words of Affirmation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Acts of Service](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22452490) by [hauntedjaeger (saellys)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger). 



> This vignette is set just after chapter two of Acts of Service.

It’s a terrible suspicion that sends her into the house after Cara leaves. 

The harvest is still at its peak, and she waves back to Ishyri, who will want her help with the nitrogen pumps in the south ponds. Winta and the foundling play in the reeds. Din is nowhere in sight. 

Omera prods one of the krill in the drying rack on her porch, and it rattles: nearly ready to be ground. 

Inside, Omera stands by the rumpled bed and looks down at the box where they cache their credits. She shouldn’t doubt what Cara told her. She ought to be able to trust. Cara has never lied to her. 

But there was trouble in Cara’s eyes, and a deep disquiet written all through the set of her limbs and the haste of her motion. And underneath that, some kind of hurt. The kind, maybe, that could compel a body to run. 

Omera pulls out the box. The pouch of credits rests beside her good dress. She takes it, empties it onto the bed, and starts to count. 

When Din finds her a moment later, she is done counting, but she hasn’t moved. “All right, what’s—” he starts as he pushes aside the tarp over the door, but then he sees that Omera is there and Cara is not, and his step falters. 

“I think,” Omera says, her voice brittle, “I think she left us.” 

Din looks down at the pile of credits, depleted. From inside his helmet comes a sound she doesn’t recognize—a hissed curse in a different language. 

She ought to have trusted. She should not have looked, though one of them would have, eventually. Better to live in hope that fades over weeks and months, than to crush it this way. She can’t take that back now. 

“What would make her do this?” she asks him. He’s staring at the empty chair, shoulders high and stiff. “Din?” 

“I don’t know.” He says it an instant too late to be strictly honest. “She was upset earlier; I wasn’t sure why.” That scans. Without Omera present, their efforts to understand each other inwardly have a tendency to turn outward, to become physical in one way or the other. And then they call it resolved, until the next time. 

The same magnetism that makes them so splendid together, and made their paths cross so many times, twists back on itself now and again. On the occasions one of them doesn’t already know what the other is thinking, it brews resentment. Omera just keeps them from getting spun about. 

If she didn’t, would the vexation drive him away? Without Din and all his unspoken devotion between them, would Cara feel smothered by the way Omera knows and anticipates her? 

If Omera didn’t possess the knack or spirit to coax them into dialogue, would she have already tossed them both out of her home by now? Would she have the strength, or would she let them all stay miserable instead, as long as it meant she wouldn’t be alone again? 

“Please,” she says to Din. “Tell me what happened.” 

“I brought breakfast as the kids were waking up. We talked.” 

There are many times she values his economy of words. This isn’t one of them. “About?” 

“Mandalorian culture, and whether anyone else is in a relationship like ours.” He shifts uneasily. “I thought… it felt like she was trying to pick a fight. I told her we’d talk when I got back. But.” He gestures vaguely toward the empty chair. 

She gets up from the bed. He tracks her as she starts to pace, bedside to doorway and back. 

Omera is all too aware of how little she can offer people like them. They’ve only ever known her as a lonely widow in a dirt-poor town. She is as good to them as she knows how to be, but they still have needs that don’t involve spending all their time on this tiny planet. 

Cara in particular—Omera could not imagine a woman more her opposite, when they first met. Omera came to love her honesty first, and then the softness she only showed when she felt safe, and finally the astonishing way Cara shouldered an even share of parental duties without once being asked. 

But perhaps, in the end, that was too much. Perhaps she wasn’t ready to settle. Omera can relate; she wasn’t ready either, when she had to. 

She’s stopped pacing, teeth digging into the knuckle of her first finger, and Din steps closer and puts his hand gently on her shoulder. Omera grabs it and holds on. 

She struggles, sometimes, to voice what she wants, especially when her will runs the risk of trampling someone else’s. Din is the same, though he opts not to speak at all, where Omera would rely on pleasantries that have implications. An old habit of wartime diplomacy, to dance around it. 

Without Cara there to cut straight to the core of what matters, of what they want, the dance is all the two of them would ever do. 

There is no nicety that can express how she can’t—can _not_ —lose Cara. 

“I need you to find her,” she says. 

His hand squeezes her shoulder: acknowledgment, and thanks. In trying times he needs a purpose, same as anyone else. “I’ll bring her back,” he says. 

Omera looks into his visor. “If she doesn’t want to come back…” Everyone deserves a choice. Omera needs closure, a goodbye, even secondhand. She didn’t get that the last time she lost someone. 

Din holds up his free hand, and the glowlamps switch off. The next thing Omera feels is the leather of his glove against her cheek. His unfiltered voice says, “I’ll bring. Her. Back.” 

Here is where Cara would deploy a joke like a shield, so the emotion will ricochet off. But Cara isn’t here. “Afraid I don’t have the funds to retain a bounty hunter of your caliber,” Omera tries, glad that he can’t see her threadbare attempt at a smile. 

He kisses her, cradling her face in his hands, and Omera leans into the promise of it. It’s a hope she can live in. 

She lives in it as he gets his helmet back on and leaves her. And later as she’s working in the south ponds and the _Razor Crest_ flies over, she lives in it so she doesn’t have to think about how that means Cara is much farther away than the woods. She lives in it as she eats dinner with her children, and sings them a lullaby, and promises them Cara and Din will be back soon. 

It’s a hard place to live when she lays down in an empty bed, and harder still when she wakes in it the next day. But the kids stir in the loft, the morning calls, and there is work to be done. That much hasn’t changed, though she still feels like Sorgan should have checked its spin. Omera’s body should have noticed she has no beating heart, and she won’t until they come back to her. 

But when she puts a hand to her aching chest, it does beat. So Omera gets back to work. 

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading! You can yell at me for making the OT3 sad, or send me prompts, on my Tumblr @hauntedfalcon.


End file.
